Note… this post is due to too much coffee running in my brain. Never have an espresso after midnight.

So I couldn’t sleep and lay there in bed at 4 am… thinking about what my buddy Mark Velasquez (a great photographer/artist and current contestant on bravo TV’s “work of Art”) had said last night as we were deep in conversation about what creates ideas… and how to generate better and more creative ideas and get them through to completed projects. Anyway… Mark was saying that he has all these tidbits of ideas floating around in his head all the time… and slowly they gel together to a more formed yet still not concrete idea… and over time they become a complete idea. But this process takes a certain amount of willpower and patience.

I have similar feelings… because of my career in fashion and design… I am always trying to forecast where things are going… analyzing trends… keeping track of all sorts of wacky data sets and then comparing those data points to the various histories of design and art and architecture etc. and eventually the points all start to lead toward conclusions… but it begins very fuzzy… like dust… and the dust then becomes grains of sand… and then the sand becomes dirtclods… and then the dirt clods eventually become little planets… each planet is a full idea. They come together of their own accord. As if the dust were pulled by gravity toward an answer.

Millions of these ideas come together in the little universe of my mind I would guess….but only a few of them are worth acting upon… so my brain is constantly adjusting and judging one idea “planet” against the next… and I then make decisions about only the ideas with the greatest gravity.. the biggest. Many of my thoughts lead nowhere… they are too esoteric or mundane… but this process can be counted in milliseconds so I have plenty of time for crazy stupid ideas. What blows my mind is that my brain keeps track of all the data of my life and eventually tosses out whoppers that I then act on. The little bits that are meant to find one another… seem attracted to each other somehow… and the more I want this to happen… and the more I keep adding new data… the more it happens.

I don’t know… maybe it is magnetism somehow… or God kicking us in the pants… the dust particles getting together stage of this ideation process… it seems to happen with an almost gravitational pull. All the new data entering my skull is constantly sifted through my experiential knowledge, training, and personal belief systems… toward a singular whole somehow. It happens one way or another without me really knowing. All my previous experiences and education is cataloged away so that my head can run the new data stream through it all and torture out random associations. I think it is Quantum Physics or some sort of idea magnatism/gravity determining which things are important together. Eventually enough stuff piles up in a given spot to form a planet “idea”.

Even this concept that I am trying to put into words right now… is the culmination of a lot of reading… a lot of stewing on things… and then slowly putting the ideas together over time…. the last bit is the planet being born… the “aha!”big bang moment at 4 am.

It is a bit like the creation of the universe. All the various matter that exists today… existed then… but it took a long time to develop in the planets.. with atmospheres etc… and then maybe develop life… and that life to have become intelligent… well most planets don’t make it. Much like most of the dust in my head doesn’t evolve into decent ideas. But the more I torture my head to think about creating ideas… the easier it is to do. The better I become at noticing the nuance of our world the greater my ideas become.

Matter… having formed itself from celestial atoms of dust into molecules and then chunks and then planets and water and then trees and animals and bicycles and dump-trucks… is always in motion. It is always changing, evolving. Evolution is always creating new things… and entropy is always taking things apart as fast as we or nature can build them. The old saying that “the only thing that is certain is change” is key. Change is energy. Change is the conversion of stored condensed matter… into some other form… heat… light… whatever. All the animals and plants and detritus of the planet either gets used up and converted into energy by some microbe or other animal.. or it seeps down into the soil and becomes carbon, oil, coal.

We humans dredge up all this carbon…and use it to power our world… etc etc.

SO it goes with ideas. The old ideas pile up… and lead to newer ideas… many small ideas get swallowed up by larger ideas that use their original energy as component of the new larger idea. The detritus of ideas gets mulled over and chatted about and opined over for centuries following the original idea. The energy of ideas is Literature… music… the arts in general… inventions etc. The creators of this “energy”… these ideas… move on then to making more mental decisions that lead to ideas that then creates more “energy”… more ideas.

So the faster we can make ideas… the more quantum energy we create. The very act of creating ideas… and teaching others to make decisions that lead to ideas… the faster it goes… exponentially. This is what is happening around us here on this planet… we are evolving ever faster and faster. Our minds are expanding ever greater. Of late it seems like I can actually feel my mind expanding.

The trick then is to learn to tap into the flow of this process. realizing that it exists is a fantastic insight in the first place… but learning to cultivate the process takes challenging yourself and others around you to talk about it and challenge each other to take it up a notch. Once you start… quantum physics takes over and directs your attention to the things you might be missing… you see things you need to see suddenly.

In order to tap in… you need to constantly add new data. Constantly evolve your perspective. Listen, communicate, teach.. do whatever you can to stimulate and fill that brain with new info constantly.

To stop adding in data… well that pretty much kills off ideation. Things will not be the way they were… they will not remain the same. They will evolve. it is inherent in our brain, our ecosystem, on our planet and in our universe. Dams fill up with debris and eventually fail… political systems and religions that refuse to evolve… eventually fail… most of science is eventually proven wrong… trees and animals die… everything evolves into something new. You cannot stop it. you cannot simply stop and will things to be the way they used to be… or wish for things to be the way they are right now forever. They are going to change no matter what… so the key is to step into the flow and add your knowledge set to the data of the planet in someway… even in little ways by making somebody smile… or teaching them something… or letting them teach you something.

The energy is there and working … the magnetism… the gravity… the idea creation… it is a huge flow to tap into and utilize.